Edward Crabtree

WHAT’S ALL THIS THEN!? AUKTYON LIVE AT THE GLAV CLUB, MOSCOW ON OCTOBER 6TH.

Perhaps I should have split the scene when I spied the tuba on-stage….

If I had to name the most lugubrious song that I can think of then it would have to be The House of the Rising Son by The Animals which they released in Britain in the sixties.

This soul-sapping song was the one being played by a warm up DJ as I made my way into the Glav Club in south Moscow to find out about AUKTYON.

As I shuffled through the security checkpoint, having had to divest myself of all my valuables and then graduated to the garderobe area were the process was repeated, I was, for some reason, reminded of a time I had gone to visit an inmate at Strangeways prison many years ago. Perhaps it was just that baleful ballad, with its sense of entrapment, that had put me in this frame of mind. Yet it was fitting.

Tuba.

The DJ responsible for this soundtrack, however, was something of a discrepancy. As the 800 or so audience of hipsters of all, ages piled into the auditorium he span a string of sixties Western classics – all of which were in contrast to what was to ensue.

After treating us to The Doors he exited to polite applause and then we had a chance to look at the stage. The backdrop was an old-fashioned curtain rather than the now mandatory projection. Nor was there any evidence of dry ice to get us ready. Then I spied a tuba on the stage among other brass instruments. A tuba! Hmmm…

The Munsters.

I counted about nine members of AUKTYON including three brass horn worriers, a willowy keyboardist, the bassist, the lead guitarist and the man leading the parade…who, well we’ll come to that.

None of these personnel were screen idol material – unless you include the likes of Lon Chaney in that definition.

Leonid Fyodorov, a shapeless and bespectacled man, could have been a software developer as he crouched over his guitar facing sideways to the audience.

Oleg Garkusha, a thick-set hunchback in a spangled jacket and white gloves,put me in mind of Barry Humphries’s alter ego Les Patterson. He functioned as the frontman and I kept expecting him to burst into song. Instead he tottered about the stage shaking some kind of tubular rattle like a man in the grip of delirium tremens. Once in a while bark something into the microphone or declaim something between sets.

It seems that Garkusha constitutes one of those band members who, like Andrew Ridgeley from Wham, just `provide a presence`. But at least Ridgeley was beach-body ready….

Their own creation.

AUKTYON began in 1978 after being initiated by two college kids in St Petersburg – Fyodorov and Garkusha. They soon became a fixture of the influential Leningrad Rock club with their brand of art rock.

After all these years they can still draw an audience even though their sound has mutated from theatrical post-punk to central Asian tinged big band quasi-Jazz compositions, albeit retaining the thread of theatricality.

Mindless boogie.

Tonight they churned out a series of horn-heavy rhythmical numbers, most of which were quite long and many of which displayed false endings. At best they resembled some of the early excursions of Talking Heads and at other times I was reminded of the ska-punk of Distemper who I had seen live in Kazan a few years back. Their song `Doroga`, which I recognised, is an obvious classic but many others seemed indistinguishable from each other.

The Fyodorov’s crooning, whilst it may have been the blues voice of the perestroika era, only succeeded in reminding me that I would soon be on the screeching metro going home alone to an empty flat and with nothing but duties facing me the next wet day….

Mixed reception.

After each piece Garkusha did one of those circus performer bows where you cross and uncross your hands in front of your chest while bowing three times. The applause came, but the audience seemed to have divided into three camps. The true believers were the ones engaging in some energetic jiving. Then some looked just bored and the third camp was more tolerant and expectant yet a bit lost.

I do appreciate that AUKTYON have their very own late Soviet/post-Soviet jazz-ska-folk-dance-soundtrack which is by no means a copycat of anything Western that I can think of.

However, I was in the latter two camps. Call me superficial but I could have liked them more had they not been so unprepossessing in appearance; nor, as much as I embrace a lot of `dark` music, could I relate to their doleful tone.

Perhaps I just needed to knock back more of the 350 roubles a throw Tuborg’s, or become more of a jazzer….

They continued to honk and jitter about as I took my leave at quarter to eleven. On the way out I noticed that pamphlets by Colonel Gaddafi were being sold alongside tha band’s merchandise and then I became enveloped in the sleet of the October night….

Auktyon: `Moya Lyubov` (Live in St Petersburg, 2011

DESIGN FOR LOUNGING.

FOR SOME THE KRUZHKA BARS ARE SPORTS BARS – OTHERS ARE JUST HERE FOR THE BEER.

Below street level we find a septic alcove with orange walls and chunky polished dark wood tables lit by a creamy lamp glow. A posse of twenty-somethings lounges on leather armchairs as if set for the night.Between them lies a four litre beer dispenser from which they pump autumn leaf coloured ales into heavy glass tumblers….
Welcome to a standard Kruzhka bar.
Kruzhka – meaning `mug` or`tumbler` -represents Moscow’s premier sports bar and beer restaurant chain. Its affordable wares and relaxed ethos ensure that it remains a stopping off port for many a student and expat.

Part of the cityscape.
The first of these opened its doors in March seventeen years back in the Profsouyuznaya area in the south-east of the city. Since then – from Proletarskaya to Prospekt Vernaskovo, Taganskaya to Chertonovskaya – Krushka emporiums with their signature illuminated orange-knife-and fork-with-beer tankard-between have been sprouting up near metro stations throughout the metropolis. They come and go. For example, a pleasant one in a wooded part of Voikovskaya has just vanished as has a long-standing one on Gazetny Pereleuok but there are always new ones to replace them.

A Moscow initiative,the network has been bleeding into locations as distant as Khanti-Mansisk and Tumen (both in West Siberia) and there can even be found on in Minsk, the Belorussian capital.
The product.
The owners of the Kruzhka empire maintain a low public profile. Enter a Kruzhka bar and you will be served by young men from Tajikistan or Azerbaijan who, whilst not quite the all smiles and help of a jolly inkeeper, seem attentive and hard-working enough.
Despite some pretension to being a craft beer specialist, the main beverages on offer are Zhiguli and their own house beers, all going for an average of 190 roubles for 0.5 litres. Their plain Krushka beer is pleasant but real hangover material.
Not so the Kruzhka Pshenichnoye – their Wheat beer-which is a velvety quaffable delight and counts as one of my favourite beers.

As a Brit, the process of drinking and eating are worlds apart, so I have little personal knowledge of their food. Between midday and 5 pm (or later, if they are in the mood) a scorched burger can be yours as can pork and chicken sausages, borsch with smetana and pelmeni in broth: standard Russian fare for which you can expect to pay no more than 300 roubles.
In refreshing contrast to all the craft beer joints with their Deep Purple and Green Day standards, the soundtrack to Kruzhka bars are youthful and townie friendly Russian lounge hip-hop.
On every wall is fixed a TV screen which, when not nagging you about some dismal soccer match, is either switched on to Bridge T.V. giving us up-to-the-minute European pop or showing promotional slides of people Having a Good Time in Krushka bars.
It is no surprise to discover their brand template -the menus, the colour scheme, the funky orange rugby shirts that the staff wear, the butch furniture and glasses – is to be found among all their bars .But there is still room for variety.
The Chistye Prudy Kruzhka resembles a sanitised German bierkeller whereas the one in Prospekt Mira a chilled living room, with a hookah lounge next door. In terms of buildings, the Partisanskaya Krushka, on Izmailovskaya Shosse, resembles a Japanese temple plonked without ceremony right in front of the Alfia hotel.

Sports intrusion.
That Kruzhka is a sports bar is something that I like to forget. Many an evening there has been besmirched by the goggleboxes showing green pitches with screaming commentary and by non-regular punters jumping up and down bawling `Davai! Davai!`
If, as the old saying has it, `Golf is a good walk ruined` – then… football is sure as hell a good drink ruined!
But,when without the sound and fury of penalty shoot outs, a Kruzhka bar can feel like an unpretentious haven. The interiors are well-maintained and never either too chilly or sweltering. You can get mellow there with no questions asked.
As my companion for many years, the places have their own snapshots of memories.
That time a friend of mine wanted to order a non-bloody beef burger. We spent some time looking up the Russian phrase that would get this idea across and said it to a waiter who, lo and behold, returned…with a chicken burger!
That chubby lawyer who accosted me once as he downed expensive champagne in his two piece suit, to drown that bad time a woman at work had given him…
The group of old dears who came in for an impromptu vodka party and, without asking, had the rap music switched to Soviet period ballads in their honour….
That false summer last June when a hired band was playing on the patio in front of the Prospekt Mira Kruzhka. They were cranking out a decent version of `Sunshine Reggae` and a random beaming young woman from the audience joined in on the tambourine….
The Kruzhkka bars, amenable to all and somehow very Russian, form a vital part of post-Soviet Moscow daily life.

Featured image: reutov.biglion.ru

Krushka site: www.kruzhka.ru

ABIGAIL AND THE IRON-MASKED OVERLORDS.

ABIGAIL: It’s a fairytale. No, wait. It’s steampunk…It’s a steampunk fairytale.

This August a blockbuster fantasy film, the creation of talent both inside and outside of Russia, came to town and gave birth to a new franchise. I hot-footed it to Cinemastar in Yugo Zapadnaya to be present at the birth. Such fantasy is a genre that I am not all that drawn to, but I could not miss out on such a major production.
This was released on August 22nd by Twentieth Century Fox C.I.S, but the progenitors are Kinodanz. After seven years in business this production company has already established itself as one able to call on big names. One Antonio Banderas appeared in their Beyond Reality (2016). In Abigail, likewise, the 51-year-old British actor Eddie Marson (Sherlock Holmes, 2009) plays a key part.

Beleaguered city.
Abigail constitutes a family oriented 6+ certificate science fantasy adventure served up with a steampunk aesthetic.
The film whisks us off to a world long ago and far away: Fensington. In this stylish and retro dominion, iron masked servants of a despotic state patrol the cobbled streets checking the identities of its citizens by scanning their eyes. These citizens have long been told that a terrible disease encircles the city and hence they need must remain isolated. The Special Department is charged with deporting those it deems as carriers of this disease.
This same world, however, is one in which magical powers can be called upon and where sprites flutter through the air outside the city. (The opening shots of the film introduce these, in a scene that reminded me of a certain Spice Girls video, gamboling through the forest glades).

Abigail’s quest.

Abigail Foster: a new heroine for the post-global age?
[kg-portal.ru]

The eponymous heroine, Abigail, (Tinatin Dalakishvilli) has lost her wise and vivacious father to the clutches of the Special Department. Her quest becomes one to find him and to discover who is behind the iron masks of the Special Department and what lies beyond the gates of Fensington.
This quest will cause her to doubt the official story and will introduce her to an alternate community of like-minded dissidents. This extraordinary league of gentlemen and lady magicians encourage Abigail to develope her own latent magical powers. Together they will all fly beyond the city boundaries aboard a magnificent airship….

International talents.
The brains behind this are not new to fantasy. The director and co-writer Aleksandr Boguslavsky has a background in Russian science fiction TV thrillers and his co-writer Dmitry Zhigalov has worked on the forthcoming science fiction film Project Gemini.
The 28-year-old Georgian model Dalakishivilli who first made her name five years back in an intriguing Georgian black comedy fantasy called Seazone, gets to play Abigail. She brings elegance and innocence to the role. Her father, seen in a series of flashbacks, is Marsan. Another luminary comes in the form of 30-year-old Tajik star Rinal Mukhamentov, who I recall as a pacific starman in Attraction (2016). Here he has a mute role.
Many of the outdoor shots were filmed on location in the old town part of Tallin, Estonia’s picture postcard capital.

Enchantment.

Visual sumptuousness forms a large part of the charm of Abigail. The location scenes of a spire-crossed winterscape and the cosy brownish interiors, the Edwardian-cum-twenties technology, the glittering CGI effects and the glamorous cast, all are designed to enchant.
The ambience is notched up by a quasi-classical soundtrack courtesy of the Muscovite Ryan Otter who composed for the Gogol triptych (2017, 2018). Here he employs much in the way of bass horns to convey both menace and majesty.

Subtext.
The underlying message seems to be that age-old one about how you have to ignore the crusty old powers-that-be and find your individual inner strength and so on. Nothing new here then.
The positive depiction of a father -daughter relationship is refreshing however. Marsan’s father oozes twinkly parental love. (In fact, I now realise that he must have been saying his lines in English and that these were then dubbed into Russian. This was not apparent when I watched the film!)
Otherwise this could be taken to be a veiled allegory about the current political situation in Russia where peaceful protestors can be hauled away by masked policemen and the population is forever being warned of contamination by outside sources.

Dystopia in fairyland.
The film feels like a mechanism constructed out of previous films: a bit of Harry Potter here, a bit of Equilibrium there and then a bit of The Golden Compass. However, its organising principle is its steampunk ethos which it wears heavily on its sleeve. We see plenty of mechanical contraptions and the airships have been lifted straight from the novels of Michael Moorcock. This plausible alternate world scenario is then stretched further by us being asked to believe in sprites and conjuring, which may challenge older viewers as much as it thrills younger ones.
On the one hand the shimmering magic rays and so on , realised by CGI effects, grate a bit being such a hackneyed trope but on the other, some of the fighting scenes seem a little too strong for a younger audience (Note to producers: replacing guns with swords does not make a scene any less violent!)
Then, as pretty as the locations shots are, they do make us feel a little enclosed until you feel almost as glad as the protagonists do when they commandeer the airship to take them out of there!

Big designs.
Abigail should play well to its target audience: tweenies in need of an ersatz Harry Potter and older geeks who appreciate a dash of steampunk. (Indeed, much of the film’s material was pre-released at the Moscow Comic convention long before the actual first showing).
Whether this ambitious commercial franchise can break into the coveted Western market remains to be seen though. Its very existence, nevertheless, does show the emerging strength of the Russian film industry.

Trailer for `Abigail` – dubbed into English.

Featured image from Youtube.com

RABBLE ROUSERS: BRIGADNI PODRYAD AT 16 TONS.

They came all the way from St Pete’s to prove that Punk’s Not Dead (in Russia at least).

Nearing the end of a murky summer, I found myself, for the first time, in the much vaunted 16 Tons music bar. The season had offered slim pickings in terms of live music, so I had come to witness the re-appearance of an old act. This was an act that had been forged in the stagnation of the U.S.S.R. Would they still have something to say now?

Polished bar – Gritty band.
16 Tons functions as a mock-up of a British pub of the kind anathema to me. The exterior features a facade of olde-worlde curtained windows making the place resemble some kind of fun fair attraction. Upstairs, on the inside, the place is all gleaming dark mahogany, fake shelves of books and art nouveau style lamps. In fact, it is just the sort of place that was erupting all over Britain in the nineties. Indeed, 16 Tons has been in business since 1996 and has gained a reputation for both decent live music and beer.
Brigadni Podryad – their name gets translated as `Team Contract` but carries the sense of `mercenaries` -have been torchbearers of `77 style garage punk since their Soviet baiting school days and might seem to be out-of-place in such a venue. Then again the band can claim responsibility for some 15 studio albums which contain some cherished classics the appeal of which extends beyond the punk rock cognoscenti.

All the old dudes.
People say that 16 Tons provides great beers, which are brewed on site. However, after around two hundred punters had rolled up I had to forget about following up my passable glass of white ale. Those who spent the gig propping up the bar were not going to budge an inch!

The online blurb for the band made something of the fact that they can still speak to Youth. In fact few of the audience members looked below thirty. I did see a hipster type donned in a `No Gods – Nor Masters` t-shirt but there were more portly old gents with silver hair. Some people – and this is a real sign that a band has become established – had brought their kids.

A more unusual posse of exhibitionists pushed their way to the front of the throng. They represented Tula – a fan club from 190 odd kilometers south of Moscow. They waved a big flag to announce this fact.

No nonsense rockers.
We stood around as electronic disco music played expectant tunes. When the group arrived they launched straight into an aggressive number beneath red and orange lights and with the lead singer sporting a foot long Mohican. They seemed meaner than their jolly japish videos suggest – but they would soon loosen up.
Maxim Koldaev wielded the sticks in an AC/DC t-shirt, the bearded Evgeni Hulpin was on bass guitar, Anatoly Sktyarenko was the lead guitarist and Alexander Lukyanov fronted as the lead verbalist but also guitar.

Adapted Punk.
Brigadni Podryad specialise in Sex Pistol’s style fast and heavy rock: they are to `77 what Primal Scream are to `66. The assorted rabble got what they had come for – a chance to let rip with some `in yer face` but melodic choruses. The ethos was that of fans at an ice hockey match chanting and singing in unison.
Realising, however, that you cannot base an entire set around `1-2-3-crash-bang-crash` the band do allow other musical genres into the punk party. Much of what they play might be called Power Pop. Otherwise there can be found traces of rap and folk and even, in one song, a bit of funk.

Talented performers.
Lukyanov has a versatile voice which he sometimes wastes on doing good impressions of Pistol’s era John Lydon, but sounds far better as himself. He also supplements this with clear and confident melodies picked out on his guitar which serve to enrich the grinding clatter.
The band worked the audience with merry banter between songs and the guitarist gurned at them as he crouched over his instrument in a baseball cap and small shades.
Then, to the side of the stage, in a cordoned of V.I.P area the bottle blondes cavorted in a practised way to the beat. I took these to be the band members loyal wives.

Only rock and roll.
They strummed and hollered their way through an hour and a half worth of anthems and ballads without so much as stopping for a sip of water.
Their songs included the well-known `Gitari`, the goofy `Punk Rock Uroki` (`Punk rock Lesson`) and `St Pete’s Rock and Roll`. Then there was the edifying ditty entitled `Ivan Fuck off` which the crowd relished singing along to. We also got treated to a piece in praise of Krasnodar.
Unless there is something I am missing, Brigadni Podryad, these days at least, are not so much concerned with affairs of state. They tell of everyday impatience, family life, towns and…rock and roll. Rock and Roll in particular.

I am not unused to rock gig scrums. Nevertheless, as I stumbled in a daze back to the Metro, I felt like some sort of Woody Allen character who had been corralled into a jolly knees up with a bunch of Hell’s Angels.
If only I had been able to get to the bar more often, it could have been so much different!

`Gitari` by Brigadni Podryad.

PLAYBOY OF THE EASTERN WORLD: Are the glitzy Moscow highlife DYXLESS films still relevant?

A black drone in the night sky, outside the lit window of a Moscow office block. Shady deals are underway in the interior. A heavy in the company spots the spy craft, pulls out a pistol and fires at it, blowing holes in the window. The drone drops. The credits begin….

Such is the opening to Dyxless 2 . `Wake up`, it seemed to say. `And welcome to 2015! `

Many a Russian film is, if not a goofy slapstick type comedy set in a sunny never-never land , then yet another brawny heroic retread of the `Great Patriotic War`. Within all that there exists ample room for pictures concerned with the here-and-now. Half a decade back, the Dyxless films seemed to provide just that.

The title `Dyxless` – sometimes transliterated into `Duhless` – means `Soulless` (the Russian word `Doosha` with the English suffix `less` grafted onto it). The film represents an adaptation of a novel by Sergey Minaev called `Soulless: the Tale of an Unreal Man` which caused a stir in 2006. The wine trader and broadcaster, now in his mid-forties, had exposed the `Botox. Bentley. Sushi` milieu of the new aspirational Russians. Critics even bracketed him with Bret Easton Ellis, of American Psycho fame.

Lifting the lid on a decadent glamour.

Six years later the screen version, billed as `A film about what really matters in life`, opened the Moscow International Film Festival. Kinoslovo films produced it and the now fifty year old Roman Prygunov (son of the actor Lev Prygunov) directed. The rising matinée idol, the 27 year old Danila Kozlovsky, played the story’s anti-hero, Max. (Koslovsky is known to some Western viewers for his role in The Vampire Academy).

Max Andreev is a 29-year-old orphan who has risen to be a top executive manager of a French/Russian credit company. He is, as he puts it `master of reality` and can get everything money can buy. His life, however, is… `soulless`. That is until he meets Julia (Mariya Andreeva). Julia belongs to an alternative world of anti-capitalist theatrics. For example, her crew set off a paint bomb in a fancy restaurant to protest the meat trade. A love affair results, which causes Max to reconsider his priorities. Can he renounce his old ways?

This consumerist -romp-with-a-conscience provoked enough interest to justify the making of a sequel, released in March of 2015.

Downshifter.

Dyxless 2 begins in Bali where we find Max now living as a surfing hipster, having said farewell to the life of high finance. Soon, however, his old associates track him down and use heavy-handed tactics to lure him back to Moscow. `There are new waves there`, they tell him of the Moscow that has moved on in his absence.

Installed in the Carlton-Ritz on Tverskaya Street, he is introduced to a fellow Bright Young Thing (played by the Serbian actor Milos Bikovic) who insists on Max having a make-over and introduces him to venture capitalism. Max ix back in the soulless world, but he meets Julia again, who is now married and has sold out. He also uncovers a network of corruption and in so doing discovers a new sense of purpose as a champion of ethical business. Can he keep his integrity?

Whilst the first film is an outrageous drama with a love interest, the second one is more of an espionage thriller with a veiled sociopolitical message. Both contain the same hints of dry humour about them, however.

In visual terms they both showcase well photographed scenes of the Russian capital, such as the River Moskva, or the Moscow State University seen from above. This is as befits a director with a background in advertising and rock videos. As for Koslovsky, the critics appreciated his performance enough to award him the Golden Eagle for the best film actor of 2012 for the first one. Dyxless imprinted his image on the national psyche and he has been a much sought after screen lead ever since. (Neither film, by the way, has been made available dubbed into English, but the first one can be found online with English subtitles).

Some have compared the pictures to Wall Street. They share some of the ambivalence about runaway consumerism which that film had, but lack the political punch that the film also delivered in 1987. Dyxless also calls to mind Room at the Top (1958), the classic British morality tale about the pursuit of success. However, the director owes the most to French cinema (to see just how much so, read Russian Film Symposium notes of 2013).Writing in 2013 Elena Murkhortova uncovers the way in which Dyxless `samples` some sequences from the 2007 French film 99 Francs. Of equal interest is her revelation that the character of Max owes much to Eugene Onegin, Pushkin’s immortal anti-hero.

On the domestic end, the film Generation P (2011) explores not so different themes, but in a much more edgy, oppositional manner. Likewise, the notorious Leviathan (2014) takes far more risks by zooming in on the opposite end of the social spectrum.

The Metro newspaper said at the time that there might be a further sequel on the way (after all Dyxless 2 has been the most popular Russian film of this year). Perhaps it would even become a franchise, a bit like the Bond series?

No more from Max.

This was not to be. What we got instead, three years later, was Selfie. Nikolai Khomeriki was the kingpin this time. This 44-year-old talent’s previous motion picture had been Ledokol (Icebreaker) from 2016, a fact-based gritty adventure concerning the fate of a nuclear icebreaker. Selfie too was a more Russian affair: a Moscow film noir set in icy back streets. The protagonist too, whilst affluent, was middle-aged and washed out (depicted well by Konstantin Khabensky). This film was not, nor intended to be, a continuation of the Dyxless cycle, despite the involvement of Minaev, (who wrote the screenplay this time).

You see the Dyxless films now look like period pieces. In a nation beset by sanctions and a stalling economy, where the urban young are becoming indignant about corruption and rigged elections, the glossy magazine world that those films both indulged and satirised already appears less and less relevant. Even so, before we leave the twenty Teens behind, it is worth recalling that these films seemed almost alone in their brief day for at least trying to say something about their own times.

Trailer for Dyxless.

Trailer for Dyxless 2 (English subtitles).

Main image courtesy of DOMKINO TV.

KILLER SERIAL.

Moscow’s addition to the C.S.I crime subgenre is predictable but with a charm of its own.
Eleven year old Moscow based television drama company Epic Media have gifted us with a number of their shows free of charge and with English subtitles on YouTube.
This treasure trove includes Flint (a sort of Russian update on Rambo: First Blood), Sky Court (an afterlife based fantasy parable), Department (serpentine infighting within a crime busting agency) and, from 2015, Akademia, a crime investigation drama.
There exist three of the series each consisting of twenty 45 minute episodes and it is a rare pleasure to be able to gorge on these in translation and without interruptions from someone peddling Old Granny’s Smetana.

Well-worn path.
Directed by Vyacheslav Lavrov (of the freakish Zen Drive of 2006) Akademia introduces a glamorous cast of up-and-coming faces. Galina Sumina (who appeared in the virtual reality thriller Censor of 2017), the old television hand Alexander Yatso (starring in Angelina at the moment) and Alexander Konstantinov (from the film 2010 Vroslaya doch ili Test Na) are but some of them.
To label Akademia a `C.S.I Moscow` would be to condemn it with too much haste, and yet it does adopt the template from a certain influential and iconic production. Of equal significance though is the precedent of Freud’s Method which the programme mirrors to a notable extent.

Sunny Moscow.
Contemporary Moscow is where the action takes place and we are reminded of this fact by repetitive outside shots of the capital in summery weather. The cast, donned in casual chic, are all model material and their office space and laboratory is up-to-date and spic and span. In short, this is Russia’s biggest city as you do not often see it.

Friends.
Anastasia Zorina (Sumina), a member of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation becomes involved in a complex homicide case in which she needs to call upon the services of a pathologist from the Moscow Institute – Cyril Lemke (Maxim Bitokov).
Their teamwork pays dividends so they endeavour to strike out alone and set up their own investigative group – the academy.
Their first acquisition to their new team consists of a spunky dreadlock haired hacker called Oksa (Elisavete Lotova). She is in trouble with the law for having hacked into military defence sites but her brilliant skills are just the job so they offer her some respite from the threat of jail if she works for them.
Next they enlist a rather cocksure biologist (Konstantinov). Then they further swell their ranks with a teenage chemistry boffin. All they need next is a psychology master and this arrives in the person of Doctor Rotkin (Yatso).
Another component of the mix is the traditional tough guy cop who comes with a gun (the rest of the team are not shooters, and this is part of their charm). Then, just as with Freud’s Method Zorina has to report to the elder of the tribe in the form of an uniformed and portly official.
Last, but by no means least the team employ an older security guard. He shows his Soviet origins by the reading of hard copy newspapers and the ability to conjure up historical facts which prove of use to investigations (`Nineteen fifty seven – that was the year of the International Youth Festival in Moscow`).
The scriptwriters then build a soap opera-like story arc around this extended family.
Backstories.

Maxim Bitokov as Cyril and Galina Sumina as Zorina [tv.vtomske.ru]

Zorina – who is so damned photogenic that she could suck a bag of lemons and still remain a beauty – gets ensnared in an on/off affair with a flashy lawyer but it is also apparent that there is some sexual tension between her and her pathologist associate Lemke.
Lemke, a suave metro sexual who wears pink shirts as though they are a uniform and disapproves of boxing,tries to ensure that his young son receives a good upbringing in spite of the boy’s capricious and flighty mother.
Oksa, the one time` hactivist`, still has the Sword of Damocles of a looming court case hanging over her. Zorina’s lawyer friend does his best to aid her, as does the biologist Ed Pirozhnov, who has eyes for her.
The young chemist, meanwhile has gone and fallen for Zorina’s younger sister and is also brooding over his impending conscription.
Doctor Rotkin is more of a dark horse. We only learn that he has a taste for classic rock, single malts and motorcycles and aims to write a book.

Deductions.
The untitled episodes all begin with the chance discovery of a gruesome corpse before the titles come up over a portentous score courtesy of Igor Krestovsky.
A forensic examination ensues in which cunning narratives revolve around scientific explanations: the holding up of a hair or piece of cloth by tweezers is often a pivotal moment in the story.
The skeleton of an African athlete from the nineteen fifties is discovered holed up in the wall of an office building,the mother of a gangster enacts revenge on the policemen who framed her son, a medic uses a secret nerve agent to assassinate foes,a female doctor experiments on drug addicted down-and outs in order to find a cure for her own drug dependent son. The answers are never on Ninety Third Street.
All the while Zorina is also embroiled in trying to find her missing policeman father. This search culminates in a rather overwrought conspiracy scenario which rocks the foundations of the academy, and closes Season Three.

Cracks.
Notwithstanding its overall professionalism, Akademia can appear lame at times.
The script is shared around the large cast like in one of those school plays where all the players must have a line to say. The in-car sequences, with their projected backdrops, take us back to the seventies, whereas the C.G I explosions are all too contemporary but unconvincing. So too are the latex corpses.
Then we have some obtrusive departures from verisimiltude. The pathology lab (which houses fresh dead bodies) gets treated like a living room with people barging in without prior permission. The chemical investigations sometimes present us with test tubes containing brightly coloured effervescing liquids in the manner of Doctor Jekyll.
One episode is brought to a close by the security man saving the day by shooting dead an errant villain, without anyone being concerned by the legal and moral implications of this act.

Pelmeni for the eyes.

Akademia seems more restrained and cerebral than C.S.I Miami, its rocky antecedent. This may be no bad thing, but then when you place this show alongside Freud’s Method it does fall a little short.
The latter feels grittier. For example their Moscow is sometimes wintry and ice-laden and they tackle issues such as immigration and drug abuse in a more head-on sort of way. Moreover, Freud’s Method offers some solid character acting, in particular from Ivan Okhlobstyn, against which the cast of Akademia look a little like automatons.
Akademia resembles a comforting bowl of supermarket pelmeni. It would not do you much good if taken too often. You might even find yourself entertaining the crazy notion that all is for the best in Putin’s Russia. Still, here we have a bit of pleasant well made, quality Russian television drama.

Episode 1 of series 1 of AKADEMIA.

The main picture is courtey of video.sibnet.ru

`LOST ISLAND` (`POTERRYANIY OSTROV`): YOU CAN CHECK IN, BUT YOU CAN’T CHECK OUT.

There is something not quite right about the small group of Russians living like pagans in an island in the Sakhalin province, in this intriguing thriller.

Every so often a fresh new film arrives out of nowhere that seems unique and thought-provoking. Such a film for this year comes courtesy of C.B film/Silyakoffilm and is called Poteryanniy Ostrov – Lost Island.

First screened at Stalker – the International Human Rights film festival last December, this motion picture received scant pre-publicity. I came across it whilst browsing what was on offer at the Moscow cinemas. This one, at least, was not a vacuous comedy nor about the Second World War and then the romantic poster and the promise of a `mystical thriller` enticed me further. I caught the last showing at the enormous October cinema in Novy Arbat just a few days after its first release on April 4th.

A 90 minute 16+ age limit drama/thriller, Lost Island defies categorisation. This owes to the fact that the film’s origins lie in the theatre: Natalya Moshina reworked her own stage play, then called Rikotu Island and staged twelve years back, for this screen adaptation.

Denis Silyakov whose previous credit was Dom Oknami v Pole – House Facing the Field (2017) directed the film on location on the island of Kunashir, the rugged southernmost island of the Sakhalin archipelago.

Daniil Maslennikov (Kosatka, 2014) plays Igor Voevodin, an economics analyst who produces copy for a magazine in downtown Moscow. His boss – Dmitry Astrakhan (Milliard, 2019) responds to a spot of workplace tension by proposing that the young man take the trip of a lifetime , all paid for by the company. The provisos are that it is to be a journalistic fact-finding mission and also that the destination must be chosen at random from an electronic map.
It is the fictional island of Rikotu, a far Eastern Kuril island in the province of Sakhalin in the Pacific ocean, that Igor’s finger alights.

Following a turbulent crossing on a private vessel, he arrives at his new abode to find that it is home to just twelve inhabitants who form an alternative community. Their leader is an algae specialist and an alluring young woman called Anya. ((Natalia Frey who also starred in The House Facing the Field). Dwelling in basic wooden huts and subsisting on seafood from the surrounding waters, the people live a spartan life. They also seem to worship a shrimp as their godhead.

`You’re not from these parts are you?`
[Teleproramma.po]

Igor, in his capacity as a journalist begins to question the elders of the community such as aunt Sasha Stepanova (played by Tatiana Dogileva, who has some 108 screen and TV appearances on her C.V). He soon hits a wall, however.
The islanders seem not to believe in the existence of Igor’s home city and know little about Russia too. As to how they ended up on Rikotu island, they are just as hazy.

Then when Igor stumbles on the drowned corpse of an islander who had tried to escape the question becomes: will he himself be able to leave and tell the rest of Russia what he has learnt?

The premise – where a metropolitan new world meets a recalcitrant old world – calls to mind the cult British horror movie The Wicker Man (1973). Silyakov, however, handles this material with more finesse. There are no clear villains here and the stress is more on the enigma rather than any Grand Guignol moments that the situation could throw up.

This is a twisty fable worthy of Ludmilla Petrushevskaya and it is executed with style and good character acting that avoids teetering into comedy.
Maslennikov is well cast as the innocent all-Moscow boy whereas Frey oozes femme fatale sexuality. Georgy Nazarenko (Monax ii Bes, 2016) is convincing as a grizzled old timer and real natives of Kunashir make up the cast too. Marina Cherkunova, lead singer with the band Total, as Lyusha the malcontent, adds a dash of New Age spice to it all.

Ekaterina Kobsor’s cinematography, bringing out he crystalline rocks and spruce of this desolate environment, and Dmitri Emelyanov’s quasi-classical score help to build up the ambience.

What crowns the whole drama though is the involvement of Total, an underrated Russian alternative rock/trip hop band. Their closing song `Skontachimsiya` (or A.K.A `Let’s Get Fucked in the Sky`) seals the sense of erotic entrapment of the film.

So is this just a strange thriller? One could view Lost Island as a state-of-the-nation statement. A comparison might be made with J.B.Priestley’snovel Benighted (1927) which was later made into a film called The Old Dark House (1932). In this a group of motorists trapped in an old mansion with its crotchety residents serves as a comment on Britain between the wars.

A scene from the play `Rikotu Island`.
[chekhov-teatr.ru]

One person who seems to agree with this assessment is Pavel Ruminov writing in the Theatre Times (25th January 2018). Speaking of the original stage play, he characterises it as showing us a Russia`swept into a whirlpool of mysticism and irrationality`.

That said, what remains with you long after the credits have rolled and the cinema lights turned on, is the baleful atmosphere of this distinctive film.

Trailer for the film.

Total song from `Lost Island`

Featured image Copyright: C.B film.

THE BYKOV CHALLENGE: Living Souls.

Russia's Catch 22 serves up a spicy goulash combining social satire, poetry, science fiction, magical realism, and polemic. Can YOU take it?`

`You should call me Comrade Major, you’re in the army aren’t you? Have you forgotten your rank? `

`No I haven’t comrade Major. `

I know I’m Comrade Major.`….

`I didn’t just turn up, Comrade Major, I came at your request -`

`I know I called you, I’m not senile! ` Evdokimov interrupted him loudly. `Do you think we’re all senile in Smersh? Answer me!`

`Not at all, Comrade Major`

`Not at all what?`

`Not at all senile in Smersh Comrade Major`

`How do you know what we’re like in Smersh? Perhaps you’ve been here before?`

This farcical interrogation appears in Living Souls, a state of the nation novel about Russia by Dmitry Bykov – an ebullient figure who has become a public intellectual, one of the last living representatives of the fabled `intellegentsia`, through his poetry and biographies. He will be fifty-two this year, and this novel came out in 2006 (as `ZH.D`) and was translated four years later.

Poet of dissent: Dmitry Bykov [Litschool.pro]

At 433 pages long it is a Brontosaurus of a novel which provides a panoramic odyssey through post-communist Russia.

Tomorrow’s world.

However, it is a Russia of an unspecified future. This is a nation which has broken up into two ethnic tribal groups locked in a weary civil war.

There are the quasi-Hitlerian Varangians who consider themselves to be the descendants of the Vikings and the Khazars who are made up of Jews and of Muscovite liberals. Opposed to both of them are a smaller, forgotten lost race who espouse a Tao-like approach to life which worships polarity and cycles.

Having discovered free energy in the form of `phlogiston`, the rest of the world has no need for Russian oil. No longer able to sell it, the Russians convert their black gold into foodstuffs. The government, moreover, has imposed a tax on the use of certain words hence journalists have to invent their own, and homeless people are diagnosed as suffering from `Vasilenko syndrome` and are available to adopted as pets in middle class homes.

Citizen’s tales.

Against this pessimistic backdrop where everything, and religion in particular has been militarised, a number of characters play out their own stories. These are told with great meticulousness and often through intense one to one dialogues.

There is an army general cohabiting with a native from one of the captured villages, a Varangian journalist in love with a Jewess and a young girl accompanying a homeless person. All of their fates are bound up with the fabled village of Degunino, to which they make their way….

Bringing it to the West.

Cathy Porter is a very experienced translator, but when it came to bringing this difficult novel out in English she worked alongside Bykov. They had to jettison some of it, but the gritty yet lyrical evocation of the vastness of old-new Russia remains. Bykov clearly loves the damp forests, dusty cabins and rundown villages of his homeland and that is why he is so critical of it. `You almost have to be Russian to read it`, complained a British reviewer in the Financial Times (April 6^th, 2010).

The satire recalls Kafka and Burgess but it was the British poetess Elaine Feinstein who made the most memorable comparison: `A Catch 22 for modern Russia` is how she described it. Indeed, readers Joseph Heller’s rambling comic novel will find the same sense of the absurdity of military life in these pages.

Big Russian read.

Should you get the urge to devour a Big Russian novel then – aside from the obligatory War and Peace –the obvious choices are between Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago (1957) which evokes the Bolshevik uprising and its aftermath and Solhenitzyn’s Cancer Ward (1970) which concerns the Stalinist and post-Stalinist eras. Living Souls completes the next step by offering a chronicle of modern Russia, or be it through the prism of a dystopia.

I am enough of a glutton for punishment to have read this novel not twice but three times. The first attempt was on a twelve-hour stopover at Frankfurt airport where, with the help of much German Weisbeir, I got a sense of the novels power. The second time I read it more slowly and in dribs and drabs and I was rewarded by getting more of its humour.In the third slog I could savour the different chunks of meat and vegetable in the goulash I was gorging on. Like Russia itself, Living Souls is worth persevering with in the end.

Living Souls by Dmitry Bykov (Translated by Cathy Porter) is published by Alma Books Ltd, UK.

RITE OF SPRING: IC3PEAK LIVE AT THE GLAV CLUB, MOSCOW, 12TH MAY.

Hot and edgy, these young Halloween trick-or-treaters are on the cusp of a Dark Wave.

After six years the two twenty somethings called IC3PEAK have been drawing in a devoted young following, touring countries as diverse as China and Brazil and making conservative authorities break out in a cold sweat with their fresh recordings.

Discovering that they were to manifest and the prestigious Glav Club I made my way to Leninsky Prospekt on a Sunday evening populated with relaxed people on bicycles and scooters.

Demonic upstarts.

IC3PEAK comprise Nikolai Kostylev on synths, samples, sequencers and percussion and the 24-year-old Nastya Kreslina who provides the verbals and vocals. They have produced some four albums and `Witch House` is what commentators have dubbed their brand of vaporous and baleful lounge music and dance grooves, thus linking them with other bands from hip-hop traditions who toy with crepuscular iconography.

This duo, however, like some sort of cross between the bands Otto Dix and Pussy Riot seem willing to take a stand on important issues in spite of having had some brushes with the law. Some of their gigs were cancelled following interventions from the Politsia last year but, later on. they still played at an event protesting the new government laws allowing for the restriction of the internet.

Buzz.

More than any other concert I have been to, this one exuded a feeling of being an occasion.

Most of the thousand or so punters seemed to consist of grungy teens (the ticket stipulated 16+ age limit but I think some were stretching this a tad). Some Emo/Goth tribe members were here for the `Witch` and other townie tribalists were here for the `House`, others for Witchever. Myself, in a Gary Numan T-shirt from 1993, took my place among the chin stroking elders who were here to see `what all this Witch House malarkey was about`.

A one man faux-avant garde noise merchant provided the warm up act. The audience, chanting the name of their heroes with impatience, were churlish enough to cheer when he left the stage – but he had provided a context for what was to follow.

What followed was more noise – as an aural curtain raiser for the main act. A spacey ever rising crescendo shook the hall so that when IC3Peak arrived – silhouetted in the magnesium flare of white light – the fans were at fever pitch.

Bewitched.

Kostylev, sometimes crisscrossed by beams of red light, was busy behind his techno-deck but would sometimes add a bit of needed visual stimulus by pounding on electronic drums.

Kreslina, meanwhile, strutted back and forth along the stage, now with a dignified straight-back, then all of a sudden falling into a crouch.

Her malleable voice came to us as a percussive shriek, a witches cackle, a vituperative nagging, a girlish fawning and an angelic serenade. She can hit the high notes in a way that would put Julia Volkova to shame. Sometimes her warblings bring to mind Lalo Schifin’s score to the 1979 The Amityville Horror.

The pieces were introduced by a backdrop that featured the title written out as an electrical storm and were blasted out at a fair volume. Many of these came from their last two – more confident and coherent albums – Sladkaya Zhisn (`Sweet Life`) and Skazka (`Fairytale`) but I did recognise Quartz from the Substances album too.

The band has made the commendable decision to start singing in their native tongue and some of their recent videos, particularly the one for Skazal make a point of throwing a whole load of Russianisms into the air.

That said there does appear to be a notable Japanese manga influence working behind their whole act. Just look at Kreslina’s ponytail and kimonos and listen to those Eastern melodies and observe the digital focus of it all.

Another clear ingredient to IC3Peak’s impact comprises the erotic presence of Kreslina which is all the more alluring for not seeming to be forced.

Traditional.

The masses raved. They chanted and sang along. They took snaps with their phones and waved their hands in the air. They cheered whenever Kreslina said `Preevyet Moskva!`. They let the band toy with them by returning for an unexpected second encore. All in all, genre trappings aside, this could have been a rock gig by Aria.

In the face of such adulation, and corresponding new income, it remains to be seen how much the sociopolitical significance of IC3Peak can survive….

Ringstone round.

So I was ushered out of the club following the hour and a half set and found myself, still with a beer in my hand, at the entrance to the club just happy to soak in the early summer evening. Next to me a group of teens had formed a circle. They began a playground chant based on IC3PEAK’s Smerti Bolshi Nyet (`Death Noe More`):

`In my gold chains/ I’m drowning in the swamp…`

Skazka (Fairytale)` by IC3PEAK.

AQUABOY: A new English language imprint of the strangest iconic tale to come out of Stalin’s Russia.

What enlivened a grey February afternoon in a bookshop was chancing on a new English version of The Amphibian (1928) by Alexander Belyaev.

The film adaptation of this had already introduced me to the premise of a young man who can live underwater, as it seems to be a permanent fixture on Russian television and is regarded with affection by many East Europeans of a certain age.

Until now though, I had not enjoyed the opportunity to snuggle up with the novel that had inspired the film. Karo Publishers based in St Petersburg – best known for their translated versions of Golden and Silver age greats by Pushkin and Tolstoy et al – have changed all that by bringing out The Amphibian last year.

Blockbuster.

Lenfilm’s Chelovek Amphibia (1962) constitutes a glitzy and exotic boy-meets-girl fantasy romance. The film provides a testimony to the swagger of the Khrushchev era when the Soviet Union was winning the Space Race.

Scene from ““Chelovek Amphibia`.
[polzam.ru]

With its impressive photography and sun-drenched location shots on Baku this film can hold its head up alongside America’s The West Side Story which came out in the same period.

The doomed lovers aspect of the film seems similar too: here an outcast boy with shark gill implants loves a local maiden. In contrast with American Science Fiction films, however, this situation is not a product of nuclear radiation nor science-gone-wrong, but of benign medical intervention.

The original constumes used in `Chelovek Amphibia` on display at Lenfilm studios in St Petersburg.

Soviet Michael Crichton.

The author, Alexander Romanovich Belyaev, had grown up in a religious household in the cathedral town of Smolensk. He became a lawyer before being struck down with tuberculosis which made him dependent on care for about six years.

During this trial Belyaev encountered the writings of Verne and Wells and this fired him up to embark on a career as one of Russia’s first career science fiction authors. He was to churn out seventeen – 17!- tales in this genre.

Belyaev’s life ended in 1941 or 1942 in the town of Pushkin outside St Petersburg from lack of nutrition. He was 58.

Nevertheless he had reached a wide readership in his lifetime. Professor Dowell’s Head (1937) and The Amphibian are the ones most known to the Anglophone world but if you go onto book discussion sites you will find that Belyaev still commands a reading public outside of that, and his other books remain popular too.

An installation commemorating the film `Professor Dowell’s Testament` (Lenfilm Studio, 1984) based on Belyaev’s` “Professor Dowell’s Head`. Also on display at Lenfilm studios in St Petersburg.

Unexpected.

Belyaev had The Amphibian published in a notorious era later seen as being the onset of Stalinism. The Soviet government ended the relaxed New Economic Policy amidst a fall in grain production and a new financial slump. The buzzword of the day was `sabotage` and the first Five Year Plan was being hatched and the show trials began. Hard times.

The Amphibian, in contrast, catapults us to the fishing community of Rio de Plata near Buenos Aires. The focus, furthermore is not on new mechanics but on fantastic medical science.

Water boy.

The pearl divers are thrown into superstitious dread by the appearance of a `sea devil` in their waters. This has created a journalistic splash too.

Icthyander (the amphibian) – for it is he – a young man of about twenty, is able to spend long periods swimming underwater on account of the shark gills implanted into his body. This superpower sets him apart from normal society.

His adoptive father, Doctor Salvatore – who had saved Icthyander’s life with this surgical innovation represents the maverick medical genius ( of the kind that Boris Karloff would later portray). Nevertheless he seems saner than the conniving rabble around him and gifts the poor Mexicans with free medical help. Otherwise he is a recluse, living in a walled laboratory which he shares with his servants and sundry modified animals.

Icthyander, meanwhile is smitten with a local beauty and entangled in a hopeless love tryst. The hard-bitten pearl diving mercenaries are plotting to kidnap him and put him to their own use. It will all end in a sensational court case in which Doctor Salvatore is in the dock – and against the world…

Fable.

The detached narrative is told with spare and simple prose, reminiscent of Paul Gallico, perhaps.It could work as junior fiction, although maybe it is L. Koslenikov’s 1959 translation that makes much of the dialogue seem clunky.

The beating heart of it all is the prolonged underwater sequences where we get Icthyander’s eye on the world. Here Jacques Cousteau is anticipated in fiction.

The theme of human-animal hybrids had been dealt with earlier by Mikhail Bulgakov in Heart of a Dog (1925) but this tends to be viewed as an allegory rather than science fiction.

There also exist indelible rumours claiming that the Stalin regime was attempting to breed human-monkey hybrids for military purposes. So perhaps Belyaev was closer to the truth than he thought!

Belyaev (via Salvatore) seems to mount a defence of medical progress against the prohibitions of religion in this novel. It is not clear, however, that the author had anything more in mind than writing a ripping yarn which could whisk the reader away from the daily grind of Soviet society of that time.

Contemporary echoes.

The novel stands up better than the film which is too Old School for most people’s tastes today.

However,the science fiction geek of our time expects more involved narratives which involves multiple technological twists and turns as opposed to a one premise fable like this. The Amphibian is out of fashion.

Or is it?

Fellow baby boomers may recall an American TV show (1977-1978) called The Man From Atlantis This featured Patrick Duffy as an amphibian man. (It would be churlish to point out that one of Belyaev’s novels from 1926 is titled Posledniy Chelovek iz Atlantidi – The Last Man from Atlantis!)

Then there is Guillermo del Toro’s film The Shape of Water from two years back. The similarities between this and what has been discussed does not need to be spelt out (it even features a Soviet scientist!)

So The Amphibian remains an extraordinary novel – as extraordinary as the sad life of the man who dreamt it all up.

Chelovek Amphibia- Full movie.